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"Reign of Fire"
Estimated Running Time: 101 minutes. Call me a complete loser who has no actual reason for living, and tries to escape from the facade that is his meaningless existence via fantasy films, but after seeing the previews of Reign of Fire, I knew I had to check this movie out. Well, not in a theater, because that would require social interaction, and social interaction is totally not cool, dude. Nope, I decided to wait until the DVD release of this little flick, before actually viewing it. And while it's not what one would call a "masterpiece", or even "worthy of purchasing", it makes a pretty decent rental. Like so many other action movies of this day and age, Reign of Fire suffers from too much down time, however the scenes of mindless carnage sprinkled throughout, namely the whole last half hour of the movie, are worth the price. Or, I suppose you could just read the review below, and save your hard earned cash, but that would make you a cheap son of a bitch, now wouldn't it? While the advertisements for the theatrical release of Reign of Fire made the movie out to appear incredibly bad-ass, I still approached it with a high level of trepidation. First of all, there seems to be some stigma surrounding fantasy films, and other than the original "Conan" movie, "Willow", and most recently, the "Lord of the Rings" franchise, the genre as a whole has been represented in a pretty pathetic fashion. Secondly, the acting talent was, in my mind, highly questionable. I've never heard of any of Christian Bale's previous work, and Matthew McConaughey is a pretty boy who has starred in sissy ass chick flicks with the likes of Jennifer Lopez, and a large variety of other whores whose films I wouldn't see even if the stars themselves bribed me with a breakdancing midget clad in a solid gold jumpsuit. Although, now that I stop to consider that a bit more, I think I'd really like to see this legendary golden midget. Seriously. All kidding aside though, I really had nothing else left to rent, so I went ahead and picked up Reign of Fire, then cringed and watched it cautiously. I found the beginning a bit slow for my taste. It wasn't tedious or anything, it just didn't keep me very interested. Let's get something straight here, when I rent an action movie, I want some god damn action, not some little British twit of a kid running around a London-based construction site looking for his mommy, which, sadly, is what I got. I chalked it up to being a necessary evil, and continued watching. This point is where we're introduced to young Quinn (Ben Thornton), who would eventually grow up to be the hero of this film. A moment by moment breakdown of this section of the film would drive me utterly insane, so I'll simply cut to the chase. Quinn goes playing around an underground excavation site, where the construction crew there has apparently dug a bit too deep, and stirred up some bad karma. And when I say "bad karma", I mean, "a massive fucking dragon". You read that right. Anyway, the now fully awakened dragon, who's quite obviously pissed at being disturbed, smashes out from beneath the surface of the earth, and starts a worldwide rampage. Way to go, England. After that whole fiasco, we jump ahead a few decades, to the year 2020. The one original dragon has apparently spawned thousands of other dragons to assist him in fucking shit up, which they've managed to pull off quite well. The world as we know it has been destroyed, and all that's left is a burnt, ash-covered wasteland. It's in this suck ass world of the future that the remaining human population is forced to carve out a meager existence. And it's also here that we catch up with Quinn, who has grown into a bearded bad-ass (Christian Bale). Quinn, the sole survivor of the first dragon's emergence from beneath London, went on to rally up some fellow Brits, and became the leader of a small human outpost. We're treated to a little bit of their daily routine, ie: a small caravan goes out to harvest food that they desperately need from a nearby farm, a dragon attacks them, and they barely escape with their lives. Just as I was beginning to wonder if this movie would ever get, oh, what's the word... GOOD, a bunch of heavily armed Americans show up, and breathe some life into this stagnant party. Art imitates life, doesn't it? It turns out that the Americans are in fact military personnel from Alabama, or Kentucky, or one of those other filthy redneck havens I wish would forcefully secede from the rest of the United States, so that we could drop tactical nukes on them. Now where was I? Oh yeah, the American troops, led by a soldier named Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey), come under the guise of needing a temporary safe area to repair their equipment. It also just so happens that Van Zan is a self-proclaimed dragon slayer, which he proves with the dragon fang he wears as a necklace. (Editor's Note: I never really believed that Van Zan was a dragon slayer, simply because it's common knowledge that dragon slayers are pale, fat kids who walk around with 20 sided dice in their pockets, and shout out bizarre statements like "Cast Magic Missile!" and "I shall draw my Short Sword of Goblin Bamboozling +3".) Quinn, recognizing the superiority of Americans, and their penchant for turning any boring human outpost into a bustling fortress of anti-dragon sentiment, allows them to enter his stronghold. A little bit of time passes, and Van Zan and company show the Brits how to hunt dragons in a successful manner, which involves a lot of high speed sky-diving, and big ass guns. Eventually, the Americans, along with some of the Brits, grow restless, and decide it's time to do some real damage. It's here that Quinn learns of Van Zan's real intentions. Because of his firm belief that there's only one male dragon, (the original one that Quinn witnessed as a child) Van Zan decided to head to merry old England in the hopes of killing this aforementioned beastie, thereby making it impossible for the species to continue reproducing. Against Quinn's wishes, Van Zan recruits a handful of British cannon fodder to follow him to London, where the first dragon emerged, and still resides, in the hopes of shutting his ass down. Unfortunately for them, this dragon is apparently a total bad-ass, because he ends up toasting all of these would be troops, except for Van Zan, and his prized helicopter pilot, "Breasts"... I mean, Alex (Izabella Scorupco). Naturally, the male dragon, who was none to happy about being pestered by humans, retaliates by scorching the hell out of Quinn's fortress, and killing a bunch of people. At this point Quinn comes to his senses, and agrees to go back to London with Van Zan and Alex, in order to really kill the dragon this time. Seriously. So this trio of warriors arms themselves with crossbows, C4 tipped bolts, and Van Zan's trademark battle axe, before flying by chopper into London. With the element of surprise, and Quinn's vast knowledge of the tunnels beneath the city, on their side, there's no way these heroes can lose. Right? Right? Well, yes and no. After luring the dragon down to the ground, the three humans split up, each with a vital role in killing the scaly bastard. Honestly, they really did set up this majorly intricate battle plan, but I'm not interested in typing it all up for your benefit. Suffice it to say, "kill stuff" was the order of the day. Since in this kind of movie, someone important always has to die, I was beginning to wonder who it was that was going to shuffle off this mortal coil, before the credits rolled, and I went to the video store to demand my money back. My question was answered most decidedly when, during a daring maneuver that involved jumping off of something really high, in order to hack into the dragon's head with his battle axe, my hero Van Zan was fucking eaten by that son of a bitch dragon! There was no, "Just kidding, I'm fine. The dragon didn't actually swallow me. Yadda Yadda..." bullshit. Van Zan was just plain eaten. It was at that moment that I realized I had just witnessed the greatest performance Matthew McConaughey would ever give to the world of film. Kudos, pretty boy. Fueled by the loss of their comrade, and probably also by the fact that neither one of them wanted to get eaten as well, Quinn and Alex carried the fight to it's conclusion. And what an awesomely generic conclusion it was. Quinn was forced to stand more or less in the dragon's face, which gave him a perfect opportunity to shoot one of those lovely C4 tipped bolts into the beast's gaping maw, just as it opened wide to blast his ass with fire. This triggered a major explosion with a blast radius that was centralized primarily in the dragon's god damn head, and accomplished that whole "kill stuff" objective rather nicely. Score one for humanity, you lizard son of a bitch! Up With People, Down With Dragons! Gore in 2004! After that climactic sequence, I was once again forced to sit through a seemingly endless stretch of dialogue between Quinn and Alex, that can be summed up best with the words, "This is so fucking boring, either gouge my eyes and ears out, or end the god damn movie already". Quinn ends up handing over leadership of the surviving Brits and their smoldering fortress to his "adopted son" who's name I can't recall. Not that it matters. There's a bit more pointless chatter, and the credits roll. Praise be to merciless Buddha, the fucking movie is over. In my opinion (which is always right), this movie suffered from the same fatal flaw as pretty much every other action movie made in the last seven years or so: they tried to give it a serious plot. I mean, come on. If I wanted a plot, I'd turn on the Lifetime channel, and watch one of those crybaby-ass movies that are all the rage among women and really gay men. Nobody in their right mind watches an action movie and goes, "Well, the stunt work and special effects are awesome, but where's the story? I don't genuinely feel Rambo's pain." Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch "The Road Warrior", which is a real man's action movie. Adios.
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